For most publishers approaching a game launch, stretching their marketing dollars is their primary concern. But occasionally a publisher has deep enough pockets to splurge, using their launch campaign as a way to show off the sheer amount of wealth behind the title. Enter SNK: The Saudi-backed Japanese developer of classic Fighting game franchises like , , and, central to our discussion here, . With one of the most lavish marketing campaigns in recent history, SNK sought to put back among the pantheon of arcade-style fighters with its first entry in over two decades: .
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But, as we’ll see in a second, the results of this push were below expectations. Despite an expansive influencer marketing campaign stretching across the sporting and live-streaming industries, Fatal Fury: CotW failed to generate numbers on par with its competitors. We’re going to look at exactly what SNK did to promote the game, where Fatal Fury: CotW fits into the Fighting game scene, and how SNK might have created more on-target influencer marketing efforts to boost viewership.
The Situation Over at SNK and Connections to Saudi Arabia
But first, a brief bit of history on SNK and Fatal Fury. The last Fatal Fury game came out in the late 90’s, making Fatal Fury: CotW a return to a long-dormant series. Aside from ports to modern consoles of the original Fatal Fury games, gamers in 2025 are more likely to know of the series from its spin-off King of Fighters which has received consistent new titles since its first game 20 years ago. In other words, promoting a new Fatal Fury game meant practically launching from a standing start, with only a handful of hardcore fans waiting for the series’ return.
Regardless, when SNK was bought out by Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman, the company committed to its backlog of Fighting game franchises. In December 2024, SNK established KOF Studio, a new brand under which all their future Fighting games would be released. Additionally, the company’s Saudi connection guarantees its future games a spot at major esports tournaments, like this year’s Esports World Cup. With a bankroll and connections, the potential for a Fatal Fury resurgence seemed hopeful.
Yet when Fatal Fury: CotW released on the 24th of April, the sales were lackluster. The game sold just 6.3K copies in Japan in its first 11 days, and hit a peak concurrent player count of only 4.7K on Steam (for comparison, other Fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 8 hit in the tens of thousands upon launch). Just a few weeks after release, SNK CEO Kenji Matsubara stepped down from his post; although Fatal Fury’s poor performance wasn’t officially cited as the reason, the timing couldn’t be worse and certainly justifies speculation that the two events are linked.
Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Throws Everything Behind Its Marketing Campaign
With such a high-profile marketing campaign, there was a lot of pressure to get results. To summarize just a handful of the most relevant activations for Fatal Fury: CotW…
Addition of celebrities to the roster of fighters, most notably (and controversially) Cristiano Ronaldo, but also DJ Salvatore Ganacci (both of whom have connections to Saudi Arabia’s other entertainment endeavours)
A bevy of development content pre-release, including dev streams and early access to the full soundtrack (produced by world-class DJs)
Many, MANY sponsored videos of the game from high-profile YouTubers like the Game Grumps
A full live stream of Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed playing the game in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus
These examples only scratch the surface of SNK’s marketing campaign for the game, but they demonstrate the breadth of the influencer marketing activations and their focus on online, streaming, and sports audiences. With high-profile influencers positioned in some of the most expensive venues, you can imagine none of this came cheap either (although leveraging prior connections helped mitigate costs).
After this splashy marketing push, it can be easy to forget what people actually thought of the game itself. Overall, Fatal Fury: CotW reviewed well, being praised as a faithful revival of the series with solid core gameplay thanks to the game’s new REV system. But, again, unfavourable comparisons to other Fighting games were frequent, pointing out that there wasn’t that X factor needed to make Fatal Fury: CotW stand out from its competitors. In particular, the RPG-like “Episodes of South Town” mode felt under-developed compared to modes like Street Fighter 6’s “World Tour”. On the whole then, reviewers generally felt that Fatal Fury: CotW was some of SNK’s finest work… but not some of the best in the genre.
How Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Fits into the Fighting Game Landscape
This lukewarm response unfortunately matched the game’s reception on live streaming. Looking at the top Fighting games by first 30 days’ hours watched, Fatal Fury: CotW sits at just 1.5M hours watched – far away from the genre’s top performers like Street Fighter 6 (43.3M) and Tekken 8 (24.8M), and even behind its spin-off franchise King of Fighters XV (3.3M). The primary reason for this is simple: These other franchises have been supported over many years, whereas Fatal Fury: CotW had to jump from a dead stop. In saying that, the response was still lower than expected based on the game’s beta performance back in March (which brought in 384K hours watched).
These other games have been supported for many years by core fans through Fighting game tournaments and live-streaming events. EVO is the premier Fighting game tournament, with events in Japan, the U.S., France, and Singapore. Fatal Fury: CotW got its first taste of exposure at EVO Japan 2025 with a small sideshow event that also acted as the qualifiers for the Esports World Cup. The game drew in just 35K hours watched across the whole event – not an unexpected result given the title is in its infancy, but a far cry from the hundreds of thousands of hours watched brought in by other Fighting games on display like Tekken 8, Guilty Gear -Strive-, and Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising.
What’s more concerning is how Fatal Fury: CotW matched up against another newcomer to the Fighting game scene: Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O., which launched back in January of 2025. Virtua Fighter 5R.E.V.O.was highlighted heavily at the event, playing alongside Street Fighter 6 on the final day but still managing to bring in 558K hours watched across the 3 days (putting it in 3rd place of all games played). The fact that the Japanese Fighting game community showed up to support this title in droves while Fatal Fury: CotW floundered is a poor sign of the community’s attitude toward the title.
Key Fighting game tournaments act as barometers for Fighting game fans’ opinions of the titles on display. Again, Fatal Fury: CotW underperformed with the second lowest co-streaming % of all games played at just 29% (with the other newcomer Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. coming lower at 28%). With primarily Japanese streamers covering the event, both the low viewership and low co-streaming % tell the tale that Fatal Fury: CotW hasn’t captivated its home market. Compare this to Street Fighter 6 which received massive support upon its release, such as the Crazy Raccoon Cup back in 2023 (4.3M hours watched) featuring major Japanese streamers like k4sen, Kuzuha Channel, and fps_shaka (some of these being the most watched streamers across all genres).
Given the largely Western focus of SNK’s marketing campaign, it may be that they’re not interested in the Japanese Fighting game community. After all, EVO America 2024 was the tournament’s most popular edition yet, proving there is an appetite for Fighting games in the U.S.. But even in this endeavour, there have been missteps. For example, streamer Maximilian_DOOD is one of the biggest Western supporters of the Fighting game genre and pulled in the highest viewership for Fatal Fury: CotW upon its release. However, his interest was merely casual: He pulled out of doing sponsored content for Fatal Fury: CotW due to controversy around Ronaldo’s inclusion in the game. This was a massive miss for SNK in the Western market, with Twitch often partnering with Maximilian_DOOD for events like the Twitch Rivals Street Fighter 6 event back in 2023.
Where Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves Missed the Mark With Its Influencer Marketing
We’ve seen that SNK focused on supporting Fatal Fury: CotW with Saudi-based influencer and esports connections, but despite this (and positive reviews) the game underperformed upon release and failed to capture the Japanese Fighting game community (with some missteps in the U.S. market as well). So where, in our opinion, did SNK’s marketing campaign go wrong?
1) The influencer marketing campaign for Fatal Fury: CotW was almost exclusively aimed at generating awareness for the franchise and attracting new customers, but with little consideration for activating the core fanbase.
This core fanbase would be mostly in Japan given the series’ history, yet events were held primarily in the U.S. or Europe and with Western influencers like Kai Cenat. The efforts made in the Japanese streaming community were not well-advised, picking VTubers like Ouro Kronii and Gigi Murin who both speak English and aren’t known for Fighting game coverage. SNK might have instead considered partnering with Japanese streamers that were Fighting game pros like Kasunoko (かずのこチャンネル) and SCOREの格ゲー人生.
2) SNK threw money at the problem instead of crafting a targeted campaign.
This isn’t 2017 where game discovery is as simple as sponsoring the top streamers or YouTubers: Players require nurturing and highly-specific ads that appeal to their specific corner of the community for game advertising to feel genuine and drive sales. By taking a “broadcast approach” of slapping Fatal Fury: CotW branding on high-profile events, SNK failed to cultivate a core fanbase that would fervently support the game upon release and spread news of it through word-of-mouth. Additionally, the priority seemed to be on leveraging/promoting the company’s other interests (e.g., Cristiano Ronaldo) rather than including content that would appeal to Fighting game fans specifically.
3) The timing of the game’s release clashed with Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O.’s time in the sun, and also didn’t provide a long enough runway into key esports events
While SNK was no doubt more concerned about providing time between Fatal Fury: CotW’s release and the Esports World Cup, this timing unfortunately meant that the game wasn’t able to build up a big enough roster of professional esports players and viewers prior to EVO Japan 2025. If SNK was willing to sacrifice this event’s viewership for Western events later in the year, this approach might make sense…
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Which brings us to two possible conclusions: Either SNK failed to reach their core audience or, more likely, they never planned to reactivate that core audience at all.
It’s possible that SNK is set on playing the long game here, driving awareness for Fatal Fury as a franchise for Western audiences. That aspect of the campaign certainly worked: Before this, Fatal Fury was lesser known even than its spinoff series King of Fighters. This lines up with their strategy so far, even if the amount of money put into such efforts upfront doesn’t exactly seem sustainable.
SNK has now positioned its arcade-style fighter as a global phenomenon. Its commitment to driving home its Fighting game focus with KOF Studio suggests the Saudi-backed company is looking at the world stage (as many other Saudi endeavours have done, like with LIV Golf). The best litmus tests for this approach will come later in the year, with EVO in Las Vegas in August and, of course, the Esports World Cup. One of the advantages of the Fighting game genre is that these games are evergreen: With continued support over the coming months, a loyal community could still spring up around Fatal Fury.
For expert insights on how to activate your customers, reactivate lapsed customers, and attract new customers, read more in Stream Hatchet & Sideqik’s Influencer Marketing eBook:
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